


Our Lady of the Teeth

by sarahworm



Category: Jennifer's Body (2009)
Genre: F/F, ghost stories (sort of), hallowlween, it's late but i'm counting it, setting: dungeons and dragons esque
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27395866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahworm/pseuds/sarahworm
Summary: A lone traveler carries a story.
Relationships: Jennifer Check/Anita "Needy" Lesnicki
Kudos: 25





	Our Lady of the Teeth

The traveler swept into the inn on a gust of autumn wind. It was a chill night, clouds moving briskly across the full moon, the sharp breeze rattling the tree leaves.

The traveler ordered his ale and rubbed his hands together before the inn’s worn hearth. The innkeeper and her wife, the four regulars in the corner, and the serving girl who fetched the wood and water from the well were used to seeing travelers like him. Threadbare pack and patched cloak, a far away look in his eyes. Always thinking of the next place they were going.

The serving girl noticed the lute on his back, and when he’d gulped his way through the evening’s soup, she asked, “might we have a song, sir?”

The traveler let out a hoarse laugh. “I’m out of practice, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Come on, man,” one of the regulars called from their table. “We don’t get much entertainment around here.”

“I really can’t,” the traveler said. “But, if you like, I can tell a story I’ve brought with me. I’m a very bad bard, these days, but I still have a head for remembering tales.”

They gathered around him, eager, not used to hearing stories that hadn’t been passed down from their grandparents. The traveler accepted a second mug of ale and then he began.

“This is a story from the northern country. One I’ve carried with me on all my travels. You, sitting inside by your fires, may think it just good for a quick thrill, but know that, up there, they take it for true. Up there, they fear her so much that it’s grown to worship. A new god, they’ve created, with her own cult to go along.

“It all started on a night much like this one. Cold, windy. And a group of fools, looking for the path to fame. The town was small, like yours. A group of travelers had come in the night before. A band, eager to raise their name. No one knows who came up with the idea among them. But somehow they’d gotten their hands on a spell that promised them the one thing they wanted above all else. All they had to do was sacrifice a girl.”

The serving girl visibly shivered, but the storyteller kept on. “They picked her out of the crowd easily, like nothing at all, just pulling an apple from a tree. There had been a fire, you see, and in the aftermath it was only natural for people to be confused. So they took Jennifer. Pretty, popular, voracious Jennifer.”

His voice sounded almost bitter.

“Our band of fools thought the sacrifice had worked, for as they left the town, word of their talent spread before them, and they found themselves making more money than they ever had before.

“But they didn’t know what they had left behind. For soon after they’d left her for dead, Jennifer emerged from the woods and began to feed.

“The demon didn’t want her, but she was grown too vicious for this plane. People started to disappear, first one here and then another there, and then one who was dear to Jennifer’s closest friend. She devoured them to survive, feasting on flesh and blood, leaving corpses behind.

“When the disappearances stopped, some of the townsfolk said she’d gone, that her friend, the last to vanish, had killed her. But for most of them, she lives on. They tell their children to fear her, and they leave offerings outside of their doors at night.” The shadows shifted on his face, and the storyteller looked haggard, tired.

“As you travel farther from the village where it all started, the stories grow bigger, wilder. I found one town where they pray to Our Lady of the Teeth and her heart’s companion, the Right Hand of Vengeance. There, they believe that the Right Hand of Vengeance still searches this plane for those who wronged her love, and that once she finds them all, Jennifer will have her full power again.”

The room fell silent after the storyteller finished, until one of the regulars clapped him on the back and thanked him for the tale. Soon after that, they trickled out, the regulars gone to their homes, the innkeepers back to their rooms, the traveler upstairs to the bed he’d rented for the night.

Only the serving girl remained, sweeping the floor one final time and breaking up the ashes in the hearth to put them out.

They had only the faintest red glow left when the door swung open to admit a second traveler. The girl jumped, and then stared.

With the fire nearly gone, there was only one lit candle left in the room, which the serving girl meant to take to bed, but this new visitor was lit from within, somehow. An eerie kind of light clung to the curves of her face and her long golden hair.

The woman carried no traveler’s pack or bedroll. Just a knife – sharp, the serving girl could tell, even from where she was.

The woman’s eyes roamed over the whole empty, unlit room until they settled on the girl. “Is he upstairs?” she asked.

The girl could do nothing but nod. When the woman smiled in acknowledgement, she saw the glistening points of her teeth.

The girl stayed downstairs even after the fire had fully gone out, crouched over her candle, hardly breathing for fear of putting it out but not daring to leave.

It didn’t take long for the scream from the upstairs room to come, and when it did, it was short.

She almost hadn’t expected the woman to pass back through the room on her way out, thought that she might just vanish into the air. But she did come back down the stairs, and the girl asked her a question.

“Miss, is it true that you’re looking for all of them? How many are left?”

The woman smiled again, and the girl thought she saw something burn in her eyes. “He was the last one.”

She went back through the door then, back into the chill wind, and as soon as it swung closed the girl rushed to press herself against one of the windows. Peering out into the night, she saw the woman’s figure join another – dark hair, long fingers, piercing eyes – and take her hand, and all of a sudden disappear, as if nobody had ever been there at all.


End file.
